Posted November 8, 2013
Florida seafood dealers have asked the state to develop a comprehensive plan for managing and restoring the Apalachicola Bay, according to an article by the Florida Current available here.
On October 1, Florida filed a lawsuit against Georgia in the U.S. Supreme Court over water from the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River system. The lawsuit was filed after a 2012 collapse of the Apalachicola Bay oyster population, which Florida officials argue is cause by lack fresh water flowing from Georgia.
Steve Rash, owner of Water Street Seafood, said, “We have a lot of different agencies but there is no one consolidated plan so that everyone can be pulling in the same direction.”
Mark Berrigan, former chief for the Bureau of Aquaculture at the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, said a plan is “critical” to restoring the bay and handling future disasters, including damage caused by tropical storms.
Dan Tonsmeire, executive director of the Apalachicola Riverkeeper group, “said Florida was continuing to issue water-use permits for farms along the Apalachicola River while Georgia has imposed a moratorium on new water-use permits for farms in southwest Georgia.” WCTV also reported on the story here.
The allocation of surface water depends on state law. Three different allocation systems have developed in the United States: the riparian doctrine, the system of prior appropriation, and a hybrid of riparian and prior appropriation. For more information on water law and allocation of water under state law, please visit the National Agriculture Law Center’s Water Law Reading Room. For more information on aquaculture, please visit the National Agricultural Law Center’s website here.
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